The return
from the chase furnished the little adventure I have alluded to,--a very
small adventure, but deeply impressed upon a memory now a good deal cut up
with tracks and traces of strange beasts of accidents, quaint "vestiges of
creation," ineffaceably stamped upon what poor Andrew Romer used to call
the "old red sandstone," in playful allusion to what his friends well knew
was a heart of hearts.
The snow lay heavy in the woods, wet and heavy with the breath of coming
spring, as I tramped out of them one March morning, and found myself on
the queen's highway, within short rifle-shot of the rushing Montmorency,
whose roar had reached us through the forest an hour or two before. In the
early days of our hunt I had been so lucky as to run down and kill a large
moose, whose antlered head was a valuable trophy; and so I confided it to
the especial charge of my faithful follower, Zachary Hiver, a _brule_ or
half-breed of the Chippewa nation, who had hunted buffaloes with me on the
plains of the Saskatchewan and gaffed my salmon in the swift waters of the
Mingan and Escoumains. I had promised him powder and lead enough to
maintain his rifle for the probable remainder of his earthly hunting-
career, if he succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns
of the mammoth stag of the forest.
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